theurge.com, an Australian-based technology company making it easy to “Shop the World,” recently announced it will launch in America, the UK, and across the globe this spring. The move underscores an aim to cut into a billion-dollar market and pit the company squarely against competitors ranging from fashion search engines Lyst.com, Shopstyle.com, and Stylight.com as well as in-direct competitors Google and Amazon.
Today, Australian consumers shop the urge, daily, for thousands of designer brands and world-renowned retailers. The site, which strategically stayed live only for Australians during its incubation phase, drove millions in sales without investing in press or marketing.
“We kept this very quiet. No press, no advertising. From the day we submitted the sitemap to Google, traffic grew organically over 25% month on month. Though we were only live in Australia, we were still attracting consumers from around the world. We are excited to turn the platform on this Spring, making our service available to the globe,” said Co-Founder Cayley Ostrin.
What makes theurge.com different from the rest?
Unlike competitors who boast “12,000 brands and retailers in one place,” the urge plans to surpass these numbers and with greater diversity in labels. “We are on target to be the largest, trusted and most inclusive shopping platform in the world,” said Co-Founder Doron Ostrin.
While the primary focus of the company makes buying luxury fashion seamless by pulling stock from leading online brands and retailer, its deeper purpose is to introduce consumers to a new crop of designers.
“The more exciting end of our platform is that we feature emerging Instagram labels from around the world. So, while we carry the high-end designers, we’re opening our platform to be a much more inclusive search engine. These are labels you aren’t going to find anywhere else,” continued Doron.
The “rise of the Instagram brand” has garnered national attention, yet most search and shoppable platforms only have the bandwidth to capture a fraction of these labels.
“We are different,” said Cayley. She continues, “We built our technology, in-house, which frees us from being reliant on third-party providers. This is a valuable asset because we are built to scale quickly. As soon as we discover a fresh label on Instagram—one with distinctive design sense, a strong POV and quality in both fabrics and customer service—we can upload their inventory onto the urge.”
This marks a stark contrast as retailers, like Net-A-Porter, reported including only twenty-five, new Instagram labels last season.
Founded in Sydney, Australia, the urge will bring worldwide attention to Sydney’s growing tech industry. The founders—husband and wife duo, Doron and Cayley Ostrin—jointly have a background in both fashion, product feed management, and in startup life. Doron previously founded Productify (a technology provider to large shopping center’s such as Westfield). The team’s CTO, Pierre Caserta, was also instrumental in the development of global job search engine, Jora.
